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WordPress widgets are one of the many perks of using WordPress as your CMS. Widgets add features to your sidebar, which you can add and subtract, rearrange and customize yourself without having to tinker around in the code. There's a handful of default widgets that come with WordPress, such as tag clouds, search bar, etc–but the best are found in WordPress widget plugins. WordPress plugins make extensive customization easy, with one-click install and simple modification options. I've put together a list of the top 10 WordPress widget plugins to consider installing on your WordPress website to deck out your website sidebar to its fullest potential. (more…)

Would you like to grow your FaceBook likes? Do you want more Twitter followers? Regardless of the social network you are targeting, these principles will help you grow awareness and increase traffic to your website and business.

Add Value

The number one principle is to always add value. Whether you are writing a blog post, an email newsletter, a tweet or a FaceBook post, always try to say something that would be of value to your target reader. There are a variety of ways to create value. You can provide inform people regarding current events or happenings in your industry. You can educate them about your category of product or service. Or you can provide entertainment (this is a tricky one, of course, because not everyone finds the same things funny). (more…)

Wordpress plugins. There are thousands of them, ranging from one star to five star, brand new or tried and true, and a waste of time to absolutely necessary. So where do you start? Which are the best Wordpress plugins? The Wordpress Plugin Directory is like the App Store for Apple devices. So to help you out, we've put together a checklist of the 10 best Wordpress plugins that are must-have additions to your Wordpress site.

You may have heard that it is beneficial for your website if it has a blog, and you probably know several companies who have a blog on their website. But have you ever wondered what the point of a blog is and whether you should set one up on your site? There are quite a few reasons why your site could benefit from a blog, and the answer is yes, you should have one. Here's why: (more…)

FaceBook recently surpassed Google in terms of the average amount of time people spend on the site. Marketing your business on FaceBook is already a great way to get exposure and it will become more and more essential over time. Here are some tips on getting started.

Create a FaceBook Page. This is the first step and every business should have one. Fill out your Page profile completely and make sure to add a link back to your website (this will help with your SEO). Once you’ve created a page, you should make it more attractive by creating a custom tab that all new visitors will see. Creating a custom tab requires adding a FaceBook app that enables you to either insert custom text and graphics or link to another web page that you’ve created elsewhere. The latter option is the best way to go as it allows you to make any page on your existing website into a FaceBook tab on your FaceBook Page. Here’s a tutorial on how to accomplish this. (more…)

Social Media experts will expound upon the virtues of Twitter in terms of your online marketing strategy. There is no doubt that Twitter can help expose your product or service to thousands of new prospects if you use it right. The question is, will you use it at all?

Let’s discuss the advantages of Twitter to your online marketing efforts and then we’ll talk about reasons NOT to use Twitter.

Most articles on social media marketing start with a discussion of FaceBook and Twitter, however, I’m going to start with LinkedIn because I think it’s an often underestimated contributor to social traffic. For many small businesses, if you have a good LinkedIn strategy, it can generate as much traffic as FaceBook. Here’s how...

New Directions In Computing provides web design, web development,web hosting and SEOweb marketing to companies in Santa Barbara,Ventura, Oxnard, Camarillo, Santa Maria and San Luis Obispo. We offer professional web site design, graphic design and logo design as well as web marketing, including social networking, email marketing and search engine optimization (SEO). We are experts in a number of high quality web applications including Joomla, WordPress, x-cart and Moodle. We develop custom web applications in a variety of technologies such as PHP, ASP, Ruby/Rails, Python/Django and Java. We also develop mobile web sites and mobile apps for iPhone and Android.